Looker hosts its own MCP server now. This walks through connecting Claude Code to it, pairing it with the Looker CLI, and being clear-eyed about where the tool set stops.
The binary you no longer need
Until recently, connecting an agent to Looker meant running MCP Toolbox as a local binary. You downloaded 292 MB onto your laptop, taught it your API credentials, launched it as a stdio subprocess, and kept it updated forever. Every developer needed their own copy, and the server ran on your side of the wire.
Looker closed that gap. Every Looker (Google Cloud core) and Looker (original) instance now exposes an MCP endpoint on its own base URL:
https://780eb09e-7dab-4076-9ec1-ecf9d8414630.looker.app/mcp
